BLACKFISH PRODUCTIONS

Blackfish | Maximilian Lopp | Attic Tree

Maximilian Lopp was born in 1974 in Darmstadt. In the early age of just 10 he already discovered a growing passion for the hip-hop and breakdance movement of the early 80s. His first self-bought record was “Breakdance Boogie” – and while he was still playing with his toy cars, in the background played “New York, New York” by Grandmaster Flash & the furious five.

Electronic Keyboards always fascinated him and at least he got one for his birthday. He added a four-track recorder, a microphone and some pedal effects to his equipment – until he finally bought his first professional sampler in 1992, an Ensoniq 16 +. With some of his buddies, he formed his first hip-hop group: The “Bass Hustlers”. Maximilian realized soon, that his passion was more to find in the production of fat beats, than in position him in the spotlight. So he continued to experiment with electronic music and was highly inspired by projects such as Public Enemy, Stetsasonic, KRS One, Bomb the Bass, MARS and the like (late 80s and early 90s).

In 1999 Maximilian Lopp formed the electronic music project blackfish. His first release was the tune Apartfrom on a compilation named Inside 2, beside other tunes from Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm. This was the time when Maximilian sent out many demos and he quickly found a label, releasing more blackfish tunes – up to an album at least.
The result is today a real classic work: The album “Pole Navigation” which was actually published in 2001. The music can best be described as atmospheric, organic, electronic downtempo music with a slightly jazz flavor.

During this time, Maximilian also was in contact with Michael Reinboth/ Head of Compost Records and produced a remix for the Beanfield tune “human patterns” – which got released on compost in 2002.

His music under Blackfish suddenly found itself on several compilations, with runs of tens of thousands of pieces in France, Australia, USA and even China. Labels such as Universal, Sony Music, EMI licensed Blackfish songs. He has also received commissions from renowned companies, such as the Waldorf Synthsizer manufacturer or Toyota Germany.
Maximilian wanted to develop his musical productions more and more and started collaborations with other artists and musicians. A big project was the transformation of the electronic sounds of Pole Navigation into a live set with acoustic instruments. During this time, he met Andreas Baßermann, with whom he decided to produce the second blackfish album “Hidden shore” which was released in 2005 on Maxelect Records. With the music video to the track “watch ya wayz”, blackfish and MC Santana won the Unesco May Ayim Award in 2004 – The 1st Pan African International Black German Literature Award:

In 2005 Maximilian founded with Andreas the project Attic Tree. With this new project, both celebrated another great success: A publication on the legendary Brazilectro compilation with the bossa nova song “Voar” (feat. Roque de Souza), marked one of the greatest successes (over 30 thousand pieces have been sold). The song was licensed in 2012 again by Norman Jay (founder of the legendary “Talking Lound” label in London) for the series “Good Times” and they suddenly found themselves on a compilation with artists such as Curtis Mayfield and Ted Terry.

In 2009, Maximilian was happy that his song “Round the Block” was placed in a Fatih Akin movie (one of his absolute favourite directors). According to many critics, it was one of the best and most authentic German gangster movies: Chicko – with Dennis Moschitto and Moritz Bleibtreu.

In 2012, the Maxi “How Long?” got released. It was another collaboration with MC Santana – one of the members of Maximilian’s very first music project “bass hustlahs” (back in 1992).

He also released some very sucessfull albums and EP under his real name “Maximilian Lopp”